This week brings a unique and special home for our Featured Property of the Week! Designed by local favorite, Ralph D Anderson, this home incorporates quintessential Pacific Northwest Style, designed by the man who epitomized modern architecture in the PNW.
17020 10th Ave NW | Shoreline, Seattle
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ABOUT THE HOME
Ralph D Anderson designed the home in the 1960s along the shores of Hidden Lake, one of three homes he designed along the lake, including his own private residence. Anderson is best-known in the Seattle area for his work preserving and restoring Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood, although he also rose to prominence for his distinct “Northwest design style.”
Anderson found his distinct style after he designed his first home on Hidden Lake, made mostly from glass which he described as his “modernist glass-box phase” in an interview with The Seattle Times. After living in the challenges of heating a mostly-glass house in the winter, Anderson moved away from modernist glass designs to incorporate natural textures and Pacific Northwest views.
Anderson had a deep affinity for the water and Seattle’s natural rugged beauty which he attributed to his childhood growing up in Magnolia. His staple style provides a distinct and symbiotic relationship between natural elements and modern architecture. Vaulted ceilings and widows expose expansive views and create a modern style in harmonious conjunction with the timeless beauty of stately forests and Seattle’s many bodies of water. “I tried to work with contours, textures and vegetation of the Northwest, the wooded environment.”
This design features Anderson’s signature T-shape plan allows for natural light to spill in through the large windows, without any obstructions to the expansive view.
Anderson also incorporated the re-purposed wood from various other outlets. In this home, the kitchen counter-tops are from salvaged Teak wood taken from the Battleship USS Colorado, which was dismantled in Bremerton in 1959. The USS Colorado played a pivotal part in US defenses on the Pacific Theater in WWII. Stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii from June 1941- March 1942, the USS Colorado happened to be in the Puget Sound Navy yard for maintenance, narrowly avoiding the 1942 attack on Pearl Harbor. She is credited with returning over 6,000 American soldiers safely home following the end of WWII. Shortly after her final voyage she was decommissioned in Bremerton Navy Yard in 1947, then dismantled and sold for scrap 1959.
HIDDEN LAKE
Hidden Lake has its own interesting history, aside from Anderson’s influence. In the early 1920’s Bill Boeing took special interest in the lake to have it groomed, landscaped, lightened and deepened. He then began using the lake as his private trout fishing lake where he hosted distinguished guests such as Franklin Roosevelt. Anderson also built his personal home on the lake, where he resided until his death in 2010. Both Bill Boeing and Ralph D Anderson creating a lasting legacy in the area, which now hosts private residences, as well as a public park.
